


this is a bad town (for such a pretty face)

by luciimariiellii



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Sibling Bonding, the Hargreeves are ghosts in the apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-19 16:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciimariiellii/pseuds/luciimariiellii
Summary: Five’s gone.(How the Hargreeves cope, and how they reunite.)





	this is a bad town (for such a pretty face)

**Author's Note:**

> Not necessary to read parts 1-3 of high flying birds but it is recommended, and this will have a sequel! It’s gotta lot of questions to answer.

     “Oh, so this is where the little shit went.”

They stand in an awkward half circle around their long missing brother. Allison shoots a thinly veiled disgusted look at Klaus and says, “We can see that, Klaus.”

“You know,” Klaus mutters to himself, “There’s a reason Vanya is my favorite.”

Ben gives him a mock hurt look, a hand over his still heart. Klaus sticks his tongue out at him in retaliation.

“Shut up, assholes,” Diego growls, his gaze fixed firmly on Five.

Their youngest brother (and isn’t that wild, Klaus thinks, we finally have a youngest), looks straight through them as he takes in the absolutely decimated surroundings. To avoid his little brother’s terrified expression, Klaus looks down at Luther’s body. He is still clutching Leonard’s eye. Klaus kicks the body despite knowing his foot will go straight through, then looks at Luther. Part of him hopes he saw, but Luther is watching Five with sad eyes.

“This is your fault,” Diego says suddenly, turning to Vanya. Klaus moves away from Luther’s body just as Five stumbles over. He doesn’t seem to recognize Luther, yet.

Vanya scrambles back from Diego as he stomps over. “This is your fault,” he repeats, “and now our little brother - our thirteen year old brother - is in the apocalypse by him-fucking-self!”

Vanya makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat as her foot catches on an unidentifiable body.

“That’s enough, Diego,” Ben says, stepping in between them. “There’s no helping it now.”

“She caused the apocalypse, Ben!” Diego argues - then he looks at Ben as though he is just now realizing Ben is there.

“And so you think that would have happened if we hadn’t been so shitty to her?”

Diego remains silent, but Klaus is sure that is more because of Ben’s mere presence than his words.

While Diego and Ben argue, Klaus turns his attention back to Five. His siblings are missing what’s important right now, and that’s their little brother.

Five has already seen Allison and Diego’s bodies - and now he is approaching Klaus’s, who’s arm is outstretched towards him, Academy tattoo on display.

Five sees the tattoo. He stares for a moment in wonder - then he falls to his knees and screams. Vanya rushes to his side, offering support he can’t receive. After a moment, Klaus moves to stand behind his kneeling siblings, one hand on Vanya’s head and one hand hovering over Five’s.

And as the others’ argument rages on behind them (Luther and Diego against Allison and Ben, he knows without listening in), Klaus wishes he could figure out how to help his little brother.

 

 

 

Five loots his dead siblings’ bodies.

No big deal, he thinks, they’d want me to do this. But no matter how hard he tries to convince himself, he knows it’s very rare for the Hargreeves siblings to actually help each other. (Was very rare. You’re the only one left.)

He takes Klaus’s coat. Klaus had gotten tall, but they’d all known since childhood that would be the case. It‘s far too long, it drags behind him when he walks and the sleeves hang past his hands. But it keeps him warm, and it reminds him of Klaus, his favorite sibling - his favorite sibling who’s body he could find, seeing as how Ben and Vanya are nowhere to be seen. (Which is, admittedly, slightly worrying.)

Klaus has a lot of pills on him. When Five sees them for the first time he is unbelievably saddened; It’s a big step up from weed, and it means he’d kept on his addiction. But Five grabs them - he doesn’t know how long he’s going to be here.

He also takes the eye. Obviously, Luther had cared enough to rip the eye straight out of someone’s head. It’s possible that whoever owned the eye was the one who caused the apocalypse itself. He grabs a few of Diego’s knives, too, figuring they’d come in handy.

Then, when he’s done being some kind of grave robber, he stands and looks around.

It’s a burned and burning wasteland. He doesn’t know where to go (and he figures he can sort of go anywhere he wants, now, if it doesn’t involve a plane or a boat), so he goes for his first thought. He starts down the street to the Academy. He doesn’t feel right leaving his siblings behind, but he can’t stay here surrounded by their dead bodies forever, can he?

The Academy gates were left wide open, but the rest of the building is destroyed. Not a big surprise, judging from the other buildings he’s seen. Five treads carefully as he enters his home (terrified he’ll see Mom’s body-) because he doesn’t want to send his foot straight into a nail, or something.

And then he does see Mom. She is melting, and Five supposes he should have wondered earlier what her skin was made of. (Maybe he’d never put it past his father to use real human skin. But that’s fucked up.) He backs away from her, even though all he wants to do is hold her and cry and bring her back online, but her wires are sparking and he doesn’t really want to be around when she explodes.

He shouldn’t be as calm as he is. Sue him, but he just found four of his siblings’ bodies and realized the world had ended. What’s one more death of a loved one? (That’s fucked up, he thinks.)

He wanders around a bit more, and marvels at how he’d been in this building only a few hours ago, eating dinner with his siblings. He finds Allison’s magazines, in a charred pile, and some of her skirts in a hill of what he thinks are Klaus’s things. (Mostly various kinds of pills and bottles and baggies - and a photo album that Five picks up and holds close to his chest as he walks.) Diego’s knives are mostly undamaged, thanks to their protective case, although the blades on a few of them have warped. Luther’s books are nothing but ash and a broken bookshelf, as are Ben’s. He can’t find Pogo, or Dad.

Then he sees it.

Vanya’s body.

She is lying in what was once the dining hall, a blissful smile on her face. For some reason - maybe she’d been able to join an orchestra, like she’d always wanted? - she is wearing a white tuxedo, and in her hands are her violin and bow. He resists the urge to sob as he uncurls her fingers from the violin handle and the bow and takes them from her.

Five jolts as a realization comes to him: presumably, the entire Earth has been wiped out. That’s seven billion ghosts, plus however many had already been around.

There’s a chance his family’s ghosts are here, now, with him.

“Oh,” Five chokes, “I wish I could ask you guys to prove you’re here. Because, Klaus - if you’re around, that is - your powers would prove that ghosts exist. Which means you guys could be here. Holy shit. Fuck, Klaus, your powers would be really useful right now. I could just ask you who caused the apocalypse.”

A beam falls over nearby, but that’s because it was burnt to hell, not ghosts.

“Whatever, it’s not like you guys are gonna respond,” Five says to his sister’s dead body.

Five makes a mental list of everything he’s collected - Klaus’s coat, a picture album, some dubious pills, five or six knives, a false eye, and Vanya’s violin. Not... the best survival kit.

He thinks, maybe, holding the violin and album as he walks (Klaus’s pockets are no where near big enough) might not be great, so he stumbles around the wreckage until he finds Allison’s pile of burnt shit. It takes a minute, but he manages to locate a rhinestone covered messenger bag.

He looks ridiculous, in his Academy uniform, Klaus’s eight hundred feet long coat, and the bag. Fuck it. It’s not like anyone else is here to see. (He’ll ditch the bag and the jacket when he travels back. He won’t be staying here forever.)

The bag just fits the album, the violin, and the bow. “Sorry, Van,” he whispers to the air, “I’ll put it in a case if I find one. Promise not to break it, cross my heart, hope to die.”

(Vanya sobs as she says, “No no no, it’s okay, Five, sweetheart, it’s okay-“

Klaus pulls her into his chest and murmurs something in her ear the others can’t hear.)

“Okay,” Five says. He looks at Mom’s body and says, “Where should I go next, Mom? You’re the least likely to answer seeing as how you’re, well, not human, but I can always try.”

(Diego takes a stuttering breath as he looks over Mom’s body.)

Five sighs and turns on his heel. Bad decision - he trips and falls into the ash. He winces and mutters, “There goes Allison’s bag.” He doesn’t say anything about Klaus’s coat, because it’s already fucked to hell. He’d wondered for a second what the stains were, before realizing he really doesn’t want to know.

(Allison screams. “This is bullshit!” Ben comes up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder.

“I know, Ally, I know.”)

Five pulls himself back up and, carefully, finds his way out of the wrecked mansion and back onto the street. “Thanks for the help, Mom,” he says, in the tone people use when they don’t actually mean thank you at all.

“Left or right?” He asks the air. There’s a breeze on his left, so that’s the way he goes.

(Luther chokes. He’d flailed his arms around wildly on Five’s left just as he was asking which direction to go - and left Five went.)

 

 

 

Vanya has always been Klaus’s favorite. (Klaus’s favorite that is still alive.) Her energy is always so calm and peaceful, so when Klaus needs calm and peaceful she’s the person to go to.

That’s why he finds himself, not unlike several other years, in Vanya’s apartment on the tenth anniversary of Five’s disappearance.

Sober for just one day, he thinks, come on, come on, do it for Five!

Vanya comes into the living room from the kitchen, a big glass of water and a plate with three grilled cheese sandwiches on it in hand. She places the plate and water on the table and takes one of the sandwiches for herself. Klaus gives her a shaky smile through the sheen of sweat and pulls his legs up to him to give her room to sit.

“You gonna play his song?” He asks hoarsely.

She glances down at him and a smile is playing at her lips - another reason Vanya is his favorite. She doesn’t give him shit or pity him because of his addiction. She doesn’t doubt he can get sober (he always tries to get sober this time of year, in Five’s honor, but that always ends up going flying out the window eventually), and she takes him seriously even when he‘s high.

Basically, it’s because she’s not a total asshole.

“Let me finish my sandwich first,” She says. He gives her a thumbs up.

Add that to the list of Reasons Why Klaus, Ben, and Vanya Hargreeves Live Fucked Up Lives: Every year, they get together on the anniversary of Five’s disappearance. Klaus tries to get sober for a little while, Vanya plays Five’s favorite song and takes more of that god damned medication that Klaus despises, and Ben, well, Ben’s just fucking dead.

The thought of Ben brings his eyes to the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. His ghostly brother lounges in it, in a way Klaus knows is purely to spite their dad. (The Hargreeves siblings have a lot of habits in their adult life that were developed purely because Dad would have hated it.)

Klaus grabs a sandwich and slides the plate, now with only one grilled cheese on it, across the table. Ben grins at him and says, “I think you need that a little more than I do, buddy.”

Vanya’s finished her grilled cheese. As she crosses the room to the violin case across the room, she says to Ben’s-general-area-but-a-little-too-far-to-the-right, “Tell him he’d better eat that sandwich.”

Ben meets Klaus’s eyes and smirks. “You heard her.” Groaning, Klaus drags the plate back towards himself.

“Okay,” Vanya breathes as she brings her violin up to its proper position. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them for a moment. “To Five.”

“To Five!” Klaus cheers, going through withdrawal on his sister’s couch because he doesn’t have a place of his own and hasn’t since he was seventeen, topless, wearing impossibly tight jeans and pink socks with fairies on them, a grilled cheese sandwich in his hand,a craving for peanut butter in his brain. Ridiculous. Truly, making Five proud.

Ben, at least, sits up as he pumps his fist in the air and yells, “To Five!”

God, Five would kill them if he were here.

Vanya starts playing.

If the three of them are crying by the end of the song, that’s no one’s business but theirs. If Klaus and Vanya end up curled around each other in Vanya’s bed with Ben guarding the door, that’s no one’s business but theirs.

And maybe Five’s, if they ever see him again.

 

 

 

“He’s talking to a mannequin,” Klaus says suddenly.

Luther grimaces and says, “No, he’s talking to us, like always.”

“No, no, no,” Klaus wags his finger and looks to Ben for backup, “He just said ‘Good morning, D.’ Who’s D?”

Allison gives him a deadpan look. “Diego, duh.”

Vanya looks up from where she is sitting next to Klaus. “The only one of us Five ever used a nickname for was-“ She cuts herself off, suddenly, and looks to the ground.

“The only one of us Five ever used a nickname for was Vanya,” Klaus says for her.

“And he knows I would cut his dick off if he called me D,” Diego grumbles.

“Didn’t he name that mannequin Delores-“ Ben is cut off by Klaus’s yell.

“He’s talking to the fucking mannequin!” Klaus yells. He stands and stomps over to the damn thing (Vanya makes a quiet noise in the back of her throat as he does so, and when he hears it he makes sure to squeeze the hand he was holding before he lets it go. No one else seems to hear her). Klaus leans down and meets its painted eyes and says, “Are you sentient?”

It stares back at him blankly, as mannequins are wont to do. Klaus knocks it in the head, but his hand goes straight through.

Five stands and stretches. “Okay, day forty five, let’s go.”

A month and a half, Vanya thinks, it’s been a month and a half. It’s my fault Five has been here, alone, in the apocalypse, for a month and a half.

“Only forty five days,” Diego says, and Vanya resents that ‘only’, “and he’s already talk to mannequins.”

The brother in question is rifling through his bag, checking to make sure everything’s alright as he does every morning, before moving on to check his wagon. All the while he is muttering up a storm - talking to himself, mostly, as he has for his whole life. But every once in a while, he’ll speak louder and direct something to his ghost siblings - or, apparently, their new mannequin friend Delores.

“I mean, who does he even think he’s talking to?” Klaus asks. Luther snorts.

“You’re one to talk.”

Klaus and Ben shoot him glares at the same time - “We’ve proven that Ben was always around,” Klaus says.

At the same time, Ben deadpans, “I’m literally right fucking here.”

“He’s given the mannequin its own persona,” Vanya says. “He’s hallucinating, probably, or delusional - they’re two different things - and he thinks she’s responding when really it’s his brain making up responses. It’s a one man conversation, but he doesn’t realize that.”

Diego whistles low. “Had to get a psychology degree before you dived into our psyches in that little book of yours, huh?”

“No, I just... read a book on basic psychology...” Vanya’s voice fades as she becomes less and less sure of herself.

“Don’t be an asshole, Diego,” Allison growls. She stands apart from the group - an odd sight. Klaus is so used to seeing her constantly at Luther’s side. She must not want to be around him. The family still hasn’t recovered from - well. Vanya.

Five pulls on Klaus’s coat. (He had been using it as a blanket while he slept. Klaus doesn’t mind, nothing could make it dirtier than it already is.) Their younger brother slings the rhinestone covered bag across his torso, grabs the violin handle, and walks.

The family doesn’t know where he’s walking. Klaus doesn’t think he knows where he’s going, either, because every time they get to a turn he’ll ask if he should turn or not, every time they pass something interesting he stops and explores it. He’s just walking because he’s bored. Klaus can respect that. After all, he’d spent ten years only walking because he wanted to get high.

And, as it has been the past forty five days, the Hargreeves siblings follow their younger brother through the apocalypse.

 

 

 

Five disappeared three years ago, and Dad doesn’t care. Or he pretends not to. It’s hard to tell.

There is no time to remember the dead, no time to mourn, when you’re a hero. At least, according to Dad there isn’t. But Ben has spent every day since Five left praying he’ll come back. Prayers, it turns out, don’t work. It’s not like the Hargreeves family was ever particularly religious, anyway - Reginald Hargreeves forbids it.

Almost like he is trying to avoid the topic of Five, he sends them on a mission. The mission does not go well.

It has been a while - about a month - since they went on a mission, meaning it has been about a month since the monsters in Ben’s stomach ate. They are starving. They are desperate to eat and Ben is terrified if he waits one more minute they will eat his family and then who will he have except his monsters and-

He doesn’t want to think about that.

But the mission is going well, despite the fact that there are monsters pushing against his skin and yelling at him to feed them. The only problem is that Klaus is currently unconscious, after being knocked in the head by a bank robber’s empty gun. Ben doesn’t have to do much except provide support, until they get all of the bad guys trapped at the end of the mission, so he is busy dragging Klaus outside where Dad and Vanya are waiting in the car.

Vanya is waiting outside the car, while Dad sits in the passenger’s seat. She has a first aid kit in her hands, and she runs to meet the two of them on the steps of the bank.

“What happened?” She asks as she slings Klaus’s other arm over her shoulder. It’s hard, because he’s far taller than her, but Ben is glad she’s trying to help.

“A robber hit him in the temple with the end of his gun,” he says. Vanya frowns and opens her mouth to start asking some kind of question, gather more information on his injury.

Ben doesn’t hear it, because he is falling.

Not all of the robbers were out of ammo, it seems.

Ben Hargreeves’s last thought is, ‘I hope Klaus doesn’t bruise too bad.’

 

 

 

“Oh my god,” Vanya groans, “Oh my god, Five, sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“I think he’s playing the violin,” Klaus says.

Allison gives Five a withering look he can’t see. “Really, really, really badly.”

“Give us commentary, Van.” Klaus throws an arm around her shoulders. (If it was anyone else she would have flinched.) “What’s he doing wrong? What does he need to fix?”

A lot of things, if Vanya’s being honest. She narrows her eyes at Five and her very first criticism is, “His posture and position is way off. He needs to stand straighter, and he’s not holding the violin right.”

“Five needs to stand straighter? Wasn’t he the one who would yell at us for slumping when we weren’t even slumping?” Diego gives Vanya a mock disbelieving look.

“It’s important to stand as straight as you can when playing. And he needs to hold his violin up more, bring the handle up. It shouldn’t be that low, it’s nearly touching his chest.”

Vanya continues to watch him, trying to pick out more mistakes. Luckily, Five takes her advice.

Wait.

Five took her advice.

“Did... anyone else see him do that?” Luther asks, looking back at the group.

Vanya stares in shock, and Five stares back at her.

“Vanya? Klaus?”

“What the-“ Luther waves a hand in front of Five’s eyes. “Five?”

Five walks straight through his hand to Vanya and Klaus. “Holy shit - ghosts?”

Klaus nods as he stands. “Uh, yeah, ghosts. Wow, fuck.”

“Your hands are blue, Klaus,” Vanya says, because she’s scared to look Five in the eyes after what she did.

Klaus holds his hands out and says, “No, they’re not.”

“Well they were a few minutes ago.”

Five says, a little desperately, “Klaus? Vanya!”

“I’m right here, buddy - oh.” Klaus sighs and rubs a (not blue) hand down his face.

“Fuck!” Five yells and then turns to the mannequin to say, “Don’t tell me not to cuss, Delores!”

“Oh, my god,” Allison whispers. “Klaus, you didn’t tell us you could do that.”

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid this is the first time I’ve ever been dead!” Klaus growls.

“Where’d you go?” Five asks. He looks around frantically and his eyes glaze right over his siblings.

 

 

 

Ben dies in Vanya’s arms three years after Five’s disappearance.

He bleeds out there and Klaus is screaming and Vanya is screaming as she fumbles with the bandages and her hands are covered in red and Luther is yelling and Allison is running out of the bank and Diego is arguing with Luther and Five isn’t there and Ben is shouting, telling them all to leave before they are eaten as he chokes on his own blood-

Ben dies in Vanya’s arms.

Dad decides he’s not going to remember that one, either.

(Five’s portrait and Ben’s statue are only there to remind the children what happens when you fail.)

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr- luciimarii
> 
> stay tuned for the sequel >:3


End file.
